Tuesday, November 24, 2009

.:headgear & smoked laundry:.

In 24 hours I'll be on a train to Rochester, NY to spend Thanksgiving with my family. In preparation, I had this grandiose idea to clean my whole apartment and do all my laundry the day before. Obviously, my building's dryers had different plans.

-Yes I drool, I drool a lot. And the reason for this stems back to the 3rd grade when an early 90's sitcom landed itself in my backyard, and I was suddenly turned into the kid with HEADGEAR!! Headgear?! Who does that?Obviously my mother thought the same thing, because as quick as the orthodontist, Dr. Salmon... Marlin Salmon (no joke), told me that I have to wear my headgear to school every day, my mother told me just as quickly that I better not. I thank the Good Lord every day that my mother told me that I only had to wear my headgear at home. She definitely saved me from the worst ridicule that a 3rd grader could imagine.

This headgear looked like a Medieval torture device. Honestly, those were the choices back then. The stocks or headgear. Notice how you never saw anyone in headgear...

It was not humanly possible to close your mouth with headgear on, or in. It consisted of 2 pieces of horseshoe shaped metal. One went inside your mouth and attached to brackets cemented on your molars, and the other wrapped around on the outside all the way back to your jawbone. Then to be most fashionable, the metal attached itself to an adjustable denim, yes I said denim, neck strap.

A good portion of my headgear wearing was during my sleep. I'd wake up in a pool of my own drool and to this day I still do, sans headgear.

9:17AM: Ok, I'm up I'm up! I throw all my presorted laundry in a basket and head down to the apartment basement. And for some reason, I bring an extra quarter with me on purpose. And lo and behold... the price for a wash went from $1.25 to $1.50. I'm telepathetic!! I'm more excited that I didn't have to go back up to my apartment for another quarter than I am upset about the price going up 25 cents. Nice!!

9:26AM: Coffee & Toast & Regis & Kelly.

9:47AM: Head back down to the laundry room to change my laundry over. Dryer #1 - no glass on the window in front. Ok, then I'll use dryer #2.

*sigh* think about taking all my wet laundry down the street to the laundry mat.

And then my inner MacGyver kicks in. I look behind the dryer and the cord is just hanging there. So I plug it in. It starts, but it's loud. REALLY loud. I weigh my options. Toasted laundry or walking down the street a block to make sure it doesn't go up in flames with the whole apartment building. I choose toasted.

10:30AM: Back down to the laundry room. I'm sniffing hard trying to smell something burning. All I can smell is fried bologna from the floor above me.

Nothing is on fire!

I begin to take my laundry out when I'm surprised by my Super."Did you plug that dryer in?"